


Content

by Witchy1ness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Eleven & Jim "Chief" Hopper Parent-Child Relationship, Gen, Slight swearing, everyone deserves the chance to learn to read, learning to life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witchy1ness/pseuds/Witchy1ness
Summary: Set after season 1. What the beginning between Hopper and Eleven may have looked like.





	Content

**Author's Note:**

> Stranger Things and all recognizable characters, settings, and related are the property of The Duffer Brothers and Netflix, I'm just borrowing them :)
> 
> Written in 2018.
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticisms welcome; flames will be ignored.
> 
>  
> 
> So this is actually my last story for 2017. I started two IN 2017, which fizzled out on me, and then wrote this in like two hours ^_^;

“I'm really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart.”  
**― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea**

 

Eleven loves the cabin the man with the hat shows her to. 

Just like Mike’s basement, it’s so different from Papa’s place that it’s almost too much. The colours aren’t as bright, but there are so many different textures and smells it’s fascinating. 

She has such a sneezing fit it actually upsets her, and the man with the hat – he says his name is Jim Hopper, and that he’s the Chief of Police, whatever that means – laughs at her; which makes her angrier, but then he says he’s sorry and that it’ll be better once they clean up the dust and somehow she’s not so angry. 

Cleaning takes a long time, only partially because she doesn’t know how to. He shows her how to use a broom to sweep all the loose bits into a pile, and then there’s a thing called a dust pan to gather it up into so they can dump it neatly into a trash bag. 

Everything they uncover is so new and strange she has to stop and explore it – running her fingers over the different woods in the furniture and the walls; smelling the old blankets packed away with something called ‘mothballs’ (which also make her sneeze); watching as the cluttered cabin begins to look more orderly. 

And the entire time there’s music playing. Some of it she likes, some of it she doesn’t, but she giggles every time he dances to any of them (and even as sheltered as she has been, Eleven knows there’s something just _funny_ about his dancing). 

She loves her new room, with the bed and the blankets that now smell much better after being washed, with a window where she can actually look outside (peek outside, because rule number one of not being stupid is keeping the curtains closed). It’s not always the warmest in the cabin, but she actually likes that too. 

For one, it’s not anywhere near as cold as it was in the snow, and two, if she does get too cold she can pile as many blankets on the couch as she wants and build up the fire like he had shown her how to and sit in front of the TV. 

The TV alone was more amazing than everything else she’d seen put together. There were _so many_ things to watch and learn, but she didn’t understand so much of it that it made her even more upset. 

He would ask her what she’d watched when he came back, but most of the time she would just shrug in response. Instead, he would tell her about what he’d done that day, teaching her lots of new words for things she’d seen but didn’t have names for – including some words he made her promise not to repeat in front of anyone, though she couldn’t see why. She learned what a Chief of Police was, what the police were, and the kinds of things they had to do.

He introduced her to these things called puzzles – pictures that had been cut into pieces so you could put them back together – and she really liked being able to take what started out as a random jumble of coloured pieces and putting them together to make something recognizable. And if she put some of the pieces in the wrong place the first time and messed up the picture, well, he just laughed and said it was still better than he could do and handed her something called a Rubik’s Cube. 

And he gave her _clothes_ ; real things to wear, like Mike did. More sweatpants, but also things called overalls and underwear and shirts that fit and clothes she could wear when they went on things called walks and he taught her about the outside. 

Eleven had seen a lot of wildlife before, when she’d been out in the snow, but now she knew that what she’d been eating were called squirrels and rabbits, and the really big animals that sometimes had funny things coming out of their head were called white-tailed deer and tasted delicious - he’d laughed really hard the first time he’d given her something called ‘jerky’, which made her mad enough to push his chair over. 

That had led to what she’d been told was a ‘lecture,’ where he said that it was _not_ okay to do that to people and she said she only did it because he was being mean. He’d apologized and explained that he wasn’t laughing at her to be mean, but because it was funny; and she hadn’t apologized but promised not to do it again. He made triple-decker Eggo Extravaganzas for the first time that night, and El had quickly forgiven him. 

But for all the differences, there is one similarity that makes her wonder uneasily if trusting this policeman has been the right thing to do. Once in a while, he’ll come home with a stack of papers, and after supper he’ll sit at the kitchen table writing while she tries to watch TV and ignore the memories of the men in the other place doing the same thing. 

But it isn’t until she’s been there a month that she’s plucked up the nerve to ask him what he was doing. The terse “Reports” she receives in response triggers the panic attack she’d been successfully suppressing up until then. 

Eleven doesn’t even remember much of what happens, but when she comes back to herself they are on the floor and she is sitting in his lap, arms squashed between the two of them as he crushes her in a hug that is almost painful. He has one arm around her shoulders and the other running over her scalp, low voice rumbling a desperate chant of “You’re safe, it’s okay, you’re okay..” 

“Not okay,” she sobs, feeling the blood drying on her upper lip, and he’d picked her up like Papa used to do sometimes, which triggered another bad reaction. 

This time when she came back, they are sitting on the armchair; she is still in his lap, but wrapped in her favourite blanket with the stuffed bear he’d given her tucked under her chin, and she can’t feel any more blood. She’s not sure how to handle this; he never really touches her, she can’t stand the thought, but this is….nice. 

“Shit, kid. What happened?” 

Eleven shakes her head, but he isn’t going to let her get away with it this time. 

“Out with it. What set you off, huh?” 

She shakes her head again, curling into a miserable ball as she clutches at the bear. She can feel his ribcage expand against her side as he sighs, and he runs one hand down his face in the gesture she’d come to realize meant he isn’t sure what to do. 

Feeling bad, she offers up a quiet, “I don’t like reports.” She jostles on his lap as he laughs, which isn’t the reaction she’d been expecting. 

“Well, hell, kid, I don’t like ‘em either, but it doesn’t mean I flip my lid and trash the cabin every time I got to do them.” 

It is then she realizes the only light comes from the wood fireplace, and things have been tossed around the room. The realization makes it feel like a worm is trapped behind her ribs. 

She ignores it to ask, “Flip my lid?” 

“You went crazy,” is the dry response, and she flushes because she knows _that_ word. 

She barely manages a “Sorry,” before she is flat-out crying; huge, uncontrollable sobs that feel like they come from her toes and leave her feeling completely empty. They fall asleep on the couch, and the next thing she knows it’s the next morning and he’s rushing around the cabin, swearing as he tries to put his uniform on and make breakfast at the same time. 

“We’re going to have a talk tonight,” is thrown her way as he dashes out the door, and she’s not sure whether to be anxious or relieved that she doesn’t have to talk about it now. She distracts herself by setting the cabin to rights again.

When he gets back, she’s sitting in the armchair, wrapped in her blanket cocoon and worrying at the stuffed bear’s ears and fiddling with its arms. She waits anxiously while he takes off his outerwear. He’s got more papers with him tonight, and she eyes them uneasily when he sets them on the kitchen table before he ducks into the bathroom so he can change out of his uniform.

He comes out in sweats and a t-shirt, plopping onto the bunk across from her with a groan as he stretches his legs out to rest on the coffee table. “Alright kid. You’ve had all day now, so you gonna tell me what set off that little circus last night? I’ll explain what a circus is later,” he adds wryly, causing her to close her mouth with a click. 

She’s quiet for a moment, before offering, “I don’t like reports.” 

His head does a slow bob, but his patient blue eyes never leave hers. “Yeah, I got that. I’m asking why.” 

She looks down at the stuffed animal in her hands, playing with a soft round ear. “They always wrote reports.” 

No need to ask who ‘they’ were. 

“And…that’s bad?” 

She nods, and then shakes her head, and then scowls at the bear. 

“Reports bad because…..because.....they see me, they write reports; they – they make me do things, they write reports. P-papa makes me do things, they write reports. Scratching, scratching, always scratching –“ her voice is rising and she can’t help it. 

She cuts off abruptly as one large, warm hand reaches out to cover her own. Aside from the night before, he’s rarely touched her, knowing from her flinches and cringes it’s not welcome. But this, this isn’t a bad touch, like the men in the other place (the laboratory, her mind supplies the new word) who would grab her arms and hands so tightly she’d have marks for days. 

“It’s okay, kid. I understand.” 

Peeking up at him, she gets a funny feeling that he does understand, and it makes her wonder. “You have things that….make you flip your lid?”

The pain in his eyes is quickly masked, but not before she can see and recognize it, and there’s that worm behind her ribs again and she shouldn’t have asked. 

“Yeah,” he says roughly, heaving a sigh. “Yeah, there are. But trying to avoid those things isn’t, isn’t always the best thing, you know? It’s sure as shit not easy, and sometimes it can make things worse, but…”

Puzzled, she watches as he gets up and goes to the kitchen table, grabbing one of the papers before coming back to sit on the bunk.

“Here. This is what’s called a police report.”

Curious now, she takes the paper from him gingerly. 

“Police report?”

He nods, pointing to different spots on the page as he continues talking. “Whenever the police respond to a call, we need to make a report, keep a record. This here is where we write down what day the call came in, who took the call…”

She can’t repress a shiver as she takes in the lines of black text scrawled across most of the page, and shoves it back at him almost frantically, interrupting him. 

“Not good.”

He accepts the paper back from her, glancing over it. “Well, no, not really. But I thought you might find it interesting.”

That makes her pause. “Why?”

He studies her in a way that reminds her again of the men at the laboratory, but before it gets too bad he asks her, “You don’t think so? Even though it’s about your friends?”

 _Her friends._

Her friends, who she hasn’t seen for months now. 

_Mike._

She’s seen him, in the In-Between. But it almost hurts more, listening to him talk to her and not being allowed to talk back (she doesn’t think _he_ knows about that, but is too afraid to ask in case he tells her to stop).

Eleven stares at him for a moment before frantically snatching the paper back, eyes futilely scouring the unfamiliar lines. “What does it say?” she demands, slightly hysterically, and now his eyes widen in alarm. 

“Kid….do you not know how to read?”

_“What does it say?!”_

“It’s okay! They’re okay! They were just caught trespassing by old man Ruther’s place out in the woods, and the old man ran them off. They weren’t hurt.”

She sinks back into her blankets relieved; clutching the paper like it’s a physical link to her friends as her heart-rate slows back down.

“El, do you know how to read?”

Still staring at the paper in her hands she shakes her head, not sure why it seems like such a big deal.

“Right.”

He gets up again, only this time when he comes back he has a blank police report that he flips over and draws something on the back.

“Here, kid. You know that these are?”

Tearing her eyes away to look at the paper he’s got on the coffee table, she frowns. “Those are letters,” she informs him warily. 

He blows out a breath, “Okay, good. Can you name them for me?”

Not sure where this is going, but not seeing any reason not to, Eleven obliges, pointing at each letter as she names them. 

He seems happier about that. “Good. That’s good, kid. What about this?” He leans forward and writes something else.

She stares at the word, “E-L-E-V-E-N,” she recites. 

“And what does that spell?” he prods. 

“Spell?”

He stares at her before muttering a bunch of the words he’s told her never to say, scrubbing both hands over his face before running one through his hair. 

“Right,” he says finally. “Guess I better teach you how to read.”

She doesn’t understand what he means. 

He leans forward again and stabs a finger at the word he’d just written. “This here? This is the word ‘eleven.’ This is your name.”

“My….name?”

“Your name,” he reaffirms, and she stares at the word at the tip of his finger with new understanding.

That’s her. 

E-L-E-V-E-N is Eleven and Eleven is her. She stares up at him, wide-eyed now, and he grins back at her.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

It’s like a switch has been flipped. 

She absorbs new words as fast as he can throw them at her, and when he shows her that when **words** get put together they make a **sentence** , and that when you put a bunch of sentences together you get a **story** (“Or a report!” she blurts out, making the connection, and he laughs again, and this time she joins in.) she nearly cries with joy.

He teaches her something called Morse Code as well, and she finds the dots and dashes just as fascinating. She takes to tapping on every surface until he threatens to take away her Eggos. Learning how to work the radio is easy, although she’s a little put out that she’s not supposed to actually use it.

He moves the couch to dig in the boxes underneath the floor, and comes up with a bunch of books; a little old and worn, but remarkably free from mouse nibbles and water damage. And so begins their tradition of reading every night before bed, and even when she knows enough to read herself she prefers that he do it. 

She misses her friends – especially Mike – with an ache that never goes away, but is reassured when he says she’ll be able to see them soon.

“Soon,” she says softly, breathing on the glass in her bedroom window, and carefully tracing shaky letters in the condensation.

_Soon._

**Author's Note:**

> I finally gave in to peer pressure and binge-watched this show over the course of a three-day weekend, and holy crap am I glad I did.


End file.
